Audience

Anyone looking for an Operating System to power modern servers, desktops, and embedded platforms

About FreeBSD

FreeBSD offers advanced networking, performance, security and compatibility features today which are still missing in other operating systems, even some of the best commercial ones. FreeBSD makes an ideal Internet or Intranet server. It provides robust network services under the heaviest loads and uses memory efficiently to maintain good response times for thousands of simultaneous user processes. FreeBSD brings advanced network operating system features to appliance and embedded platforms, from higher-end Intel-based appliances to ARM, PowerPC, and MIPS hardware platforms. From mail and web appliances to routers, time servers, and wireless access points, vendors around the world rely on FreeBSD’s integrated build and cross-build environments and advanced features as the foundation for their embedded products. And the Berkeley open source license lets them decide how many of their local changes they want to contribute back.

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Pricing

Starting Price:
Free
Free Version:
Free Version available.

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Ratings/Reviews - 1 User Review

Overall 5.0 / 5
ease 4.0 / 5
features 5.0 / 5
design 5.0 / 5
support 3.0 / 5
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Company Information

FreeBSD
United States
www.freebsd.org

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FreeBSD Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What kinds of users and organization types does FreeBSD work with?
Q: What languages does FreeBSD support in their product?
Q: What kind of support options does FreeBSD offer?
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Q: How much does FreeBSD cost?

FreeBSD Product Features

FreeBSD Verified User Reviews

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  • Andy T.
    Head of Research Computing, Mathematics
    Used the software for: 2+ Years
    Frequency of Use: Daily
    User Role: User, Administrator
    Company Size: 5,000 - 9,999
    Design
    Ease
    Features
    Pricing
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    Probability You Would Recommend?
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

    "FreeBSD "

    Posted 2026-05-12

    Pros: A rock solid operating system with a long pedigree going back to the earliest days of UNIX, FreeBSD has been my operating system of choice for over 20 years. Although initial installation has always been easy, package management and updating at one time used to be more time consuming than your average Linux system but you now have the choice of either installing pre-built binary packages using the 'pkg' utility in the same way as for Linux or building them from source using the ports system, where you can customise a package's features and options before building & installing it.

    Another nice thing about FreeBSD is there are no sudden arbitrary upheavals with new releases - remember the big Ubuntu upheavals with first init, then Upstart and now systemd? Also, the descriptive device names for things like network interfaces have remained the same for decades (unlike Linux where they have changed several times in recent years and have now come back full circle to the 'eth0' style names in many cases!

    Support for virtual servers - 'jails' in FreeBSD parlance - has been a part of FreeBSD since 1999 and the open source version of the ZFS storage system developed by Sun Microsystems was enthusiastically adopted in 2008. I use FreeBSD for servers, nano-servers and also desktop systems and laptops. Finally, FreeBSD powers the world's largest streaming CDN (content delivery network) whose owners are a major contributor to FreeBSD development.

    Cons: Setting up audio-visual hardware to work with desktop movie and music player applications can be time consuming, with a fully functional A/V set-up suddenly ceasing to work after a routine FreeBSD release upgrade and involved days of work to fix. Also online support is can be harder to find than for Linux but this is largely offset by the excellent online FreeBSD Handbook.

    Overall: As a sys admin (and music lover) I use FreeBSD all the time both at home and at work where I admin several hundred systems (mainly Linux for computational & GPU work and use FreeBSD for storage and my desktop PC)

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